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The Washington Times today carries news that will surely embolden area drivers and challenge District parking authorities.
According to DMV statistics, of the 87,694 parking and moving violations contested through April, 43,631 -- 49.7 percent -- were dismissed while 44,063 were upheld. The great majority of the tickets dismissed -- roughly 33,000 of them -- were for minor violations like parking at an expired meter or parking in a reserved or illegal space. Not surprisingly, this isn't anything new for the District. In 2006, 43 percent of contested tickets were tossed; in 2007 it was 55 percent. By comparison, New York's highest rate was 39 percent and it now averages 22 percent.
The timing of this news really couldn't be worse for District officials. Hoping to raise some additional revenue and help close the city's $800 million budget gap, Mayor Adrian Fenty has instituted a beefed-up parking enforcement program that will see more parking control officers and stricter enforcement of a myriad of parking rules and regulations. The plan is estimated to raise over $20 million in FY 2010.
If the District's parking adjudicators aren't busy enough already, they could well expect a whole lot more work in the coming months -- especially from out-of-state drivers, who make up 70 percent of the 1.5 million tickets issued annually. Heck, I've never contested a ticket in my life, but I may as well start now. From the look of it, the odds aren't bad.
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WHAT? GRAHAM, are you reading this? Where are all of those professional meter maids that know what the freak they are doing????!?!?!?! This almost proves the point: the recent accolades about the city's improved ticketing system is BS. The city wants to increase the quantity of tickets issued, not the quality (i.e., correctness/accuracy) of the same. The fact that so many are being overturned virtually proves it.
A perfect example of why the ticket writers and ticket enforcers (judges) need to be in sync. If your people writing tickets have beefed up their efforts, they'll be using up more money and resources; and if the judges are just throwing out most of the tickets, all of the extra resources used will be for naught. Both sides need to support the effort if they're to achieve results. Otherwise, the judges are just sending out the message that it's okay to do things that you'll get a ticket for because most likely you wont be held accountable anyway. Just great... way to go!
All this assumes that when you challenge a ticket your correspondence doesn't end up in the trash and your ticket doubles even though you've done what you're supposed to do and you were parked legally in the first place. If there is a hell I hope there is a special place in it for those motherless, soulless pricks that write tickets for the District. This asshole in particular, should burn in Hell for all eternity.
Exactly! I've had good experiences getting tickets dismissed if I go in person. If I contest by mail, the ticket has NEVER been dismissed. In fact, the District never even acknowledged any of my written letters to contest the tickets. Just my experiences.....
Interesting. The ticket dispute I mailed in was ignored as well. (At least they didn't double the fine.) I'll have to go in person next time.
I have sent in two tickets by mail - both with complete lies about why I was parked there. I received letters in response to both of them indicating that the city had received my dispute and was reviewing it. The first one was dismissed. The second one is still being reviewed. I say send them via mail! (Just make sure to keep photo copies of everything, including the stamped envelope.)
I've probably challenged, by mail, about a half dozen tickets during my 12+ years in DC. All were given in error, and the majority of them were dismissed based on my written argument.
That said, the two that they refused to dismiss? They were probably the most egregious examples of the ticket-writer screwing up; it was quite obvious by the response that the adjudicator hadn't even read my letter. At that point, according to the rules, my only option was to pay the ticket and then request a hearing to challenge it, at which point I'd get back what I'd paid minus a $10 court fee or something along those lines.
I wasn't about to pay for their mistake, so I wrote to Jim Graham outlining the ridiculousness of my situation. He immediately sent an email to the director of the DMV, who immediately had the ticket dismissed, and gave me a personal apology. What's sad is that I had to go through this exact same process TWICE for two different tickets.
But anyone who wonders how Jim Graham gets himself reelected every time he's up? Constituent services. At this point he's long since lost my vote, but back then, before "Grahamstanding" had entered the local lexicon, I was definitely voting for a guy that went immediately to the top of the DMV just to get my erroneous parking ticket dismissed. For people who don't pay so much attention to, or don't care about, his various PR stunts over the past couple of years, all they know is that he's the guy who always answers his emails and actually takes action on them.
Actually, maybe the people of Ward 1 need to start taking more tiny problems to him. If he's spending all his time helping out people with parking tickets, maybe he won't be so prone to making an ass of himself over jumbo slices.
My father has received two parking tickets while legally parked on my Ward 6 visitors pass in properly marked spaces in the past year. He contested both tickets and had them dismissed. The metermaid in my area seems to be out-to-lunch. That is no way to raise revenue.
That jibes with my experience. I've been ticketed maybe half a dozen times for parking/moving violations and only ended up paying twice. The rest of the time, either the ticket writer didn't show, or the judge let me off with a warning, or dismissed it entirely based on the ticket being confusing or just plain wrong (busted meters, fast meters, poor signage, etc).
So yeah, good luck trying to get that $20 million, a$$holes. Why don't you get Mayor Bullethead to hit up on his Middle Eastern pervert pals for the money. They carry that kinda cash around in their fanny packs. In fact, that's all they wear when they're having one of their Wesson parties.
I think this has less to do with the adjudicators and more to do with the incompetence/laziness of the meter maids. Last summer, while parking a non-DC-registered car in a residential neighborhood WITH a valid visitor pass in the windshield, I got 4 tickets. A quick trip downtown had all four overturned. I have to say, though, most of the people in the room had no case and didn't have their tickets overturned. You'd think the enforcement officers having all of their issued tickets overturned would face some sort of penalty to reduce this sort of thing. I'm afraid that would be too...well...competent for DC government.
Just would like to take a moment and reflect on a comment from yesterday on the MD/Graham post which was particularly annoying.
Juanfe
You park illegally. You get a ticket.
You exceed the posted speed limit. You get a ticket.
I don't know what people are complaining about. I've lived in Virginia for 11 years, drive into DC very regularly, and have only ever gotten 3 parking tickets (which I deserved) and no speeding tickets.
Follow the law. Stop whining.
Dude, STFU. As these numbers clearly show - DC issues an absurd number of questionable tickets.
In the past dozen years i've received almost a dozen tickets that were total BS (and similar to these numbers, about a dozen more that were correctly issued and which i paid for).
I used to just pay the BS ones but in last couple years I have successfully gone through the hassle of fighting several tickets for both parking and from an overactive redlight camera that had it's sensor set to take pictures of cars that had actually stopped.
Hint: If you get a ticket that's bs, take a picture - the better the quality, the better obviously. If there's a faded or misleading sign, or if there's sign showing you legally parked at the location the ticket was given there's a good chance they'll dismiss the ticket.
I agree with gf and primaryhack: this definitely has less to do with the adjudicators throwing tickets out and more to do with the enforcers writing invalid tickets. I was issued one ticket for parking on a zoned block, but took photos to prove that there were no signs and it was dismissed.
I'm curious if the enforcers are simply issuing tickets to reach a quota or because they think people will just pay them without fighting them? If it's the former, then the quota needs to take into account how many are dismissed. If it's the latter, then that's a little shady.
These exalted ticket writers aren't pounding the pavement because they graduated from Harvard. Hell, even a retarded monkey can do their job. Furthermore, there is a quota they must meet so why not throw a few extra dozen or so tickets on some cars to show they haven't been dozing on the grassy square most of the afternoon.
I assume you mean no offense to retarded monkeys when making that comparison...
Your reply seems overly harsh and quite possibly racist. Let's not forget that these are people just doing their job. Maybe this is a means for supporting their children. I hate getting a ticket too but I don't hate the parking enforcement officials personally. It's just a job. Jeez, pop a Xanax.
yeah, but when they fuck up we all have to pay. I understand a certain error rate, but close to 50% are being overturned. It's one thing when an intern screws up and doesn't photocopy both sides or when a mayor f's up and loans his friend official vehicles. those screw ups don't really impact me.... but the effort involved in overturning 43,000 tickets
that's creating a shitload of hassle in people's lives.
And as far as the racist thing, I can't speak for the previous commenters intentions, but i find it to be more the problem of the accuser who sees racial overtones every time someone mentions a retarded animal.
Paranoid much? The parking enforcement is out to get you!!! It's all a giant conspiracy!!!
And I find people that tolerate comments like the aforementioned animal one are latent racists. K thanks bye.
TX2DC you're more sensitive than a clitoris.
I know you're not used to dealin' with us college edumacated folks to the north, but the number of people in DC that are openly racist, much less the number of the people on this site, is far far far faaaaaaaaaaar lower than Texas. You can relax a bit and assume the best out of people, well, at least assume they're not being racist.
Oh geeeesh. What part of my post was quite possibly racist? None was intended yet if I offended any city employee, primate or Ivy League graduate I am deeply sorry. Well, maybe not the Harvard graduate.
Wow, do I really need to explain this to you? Seriously?? Ok….it was your "retarded monkey" comment that COULD be perceived as racist, as opposed to your elitist Ivy League comment. Perhaps you meant nothing by it, but I don't think it was the smartest thing to say. And I certainly wouldn't go saying around this (or any) city, or your workplace, saying such a comment. To each their own though…
In all fairness to Liz, a retarded monkey COULD do the job.
Yes, seriously. Turn down your raceradar. I'm done here.
You should have said "differently-abled marmosets"
As a Christian, I have no problem with that statement.
So simple..even a caveman could do it.
From this day forward I will try to slip a reference to a "retarded monkey" in each of my posts.
I think the District is just extremely slow in dismissing tickets that are contested by letter. I argued a ticket when I first moved here in 2005, and it took a year or two for it to vanish from my record. Right now if I log into my account I have a ticket from late 2007 that I contested within the required timeframe. It hasn't doubled and I haven't gotten any notices that it's unpaid, so they must have gotten my letter and it's sitting somewhere in the pipeline.
Of course, it would be nice if they sent us notices saying, "Hey, we got your letter contesting the parking ticket and will be looking at it eventually," and later, "Ok, we reviewed your letter and decided to let you off the hook," but that's probably asking too much.
I usually get notices about 2 months later that they've accepted my dismissal letter. But can you imagine how much more incompetent the process would be if they tried to send out acknowledgment letters as well? Let's not forget who we're dealing with.
I'm impressed you've had a ticket around that long though. I would be afraid of getting das boot.
I'm pretty sure it takes more than one disputed ticket on your record to get booted. I used to have a roommate who would rack up a lot of tickets (she was the type who would knowingly park illegally), and she was able to avoid paying them by getting her license plate number changed every year or so. She did get booted once, but at that point she was up to $800 or so in unpaid tickets.
Every time I've written in to have a ticket dismissed, it is. I've never gone in person and my letters have never been lost (bully for me, I know.) My favorite was when I made the argument that the parking officer in my neighborhood was simply too short to see the guest past on the dashboard of my rental car. Dismissed.
Always look for mistakes, kids. I got a ticket last week, but the officer put the wrong location on it. Bam, it'll be dismissed.
Similar experience here. I was parked at an expired meter. The officer wrote the meter number on the ticket, but didn't check the little "expired meter" box. Dismissed.
How about this?
--Penalize ticket writers who have a certain percentage of their tickets reversed (assuming a 40-50% overturn rate is more than just a combination of generous judges and cranky car owners).
--Fix the signage that's confusing. Encourage people to submit photos of these signs from their neighborhood.
--Educate the public/ticket writers on where you can and can't park.
Dream world, right?
OK then, I'd settle for this: make ticket writers who park illegally and get caught (warm up your cameras, folks!) pay the same fines regular citizens pay for parking illegally. But wait -- would they be able to argue their case in front of a judge and have THEIR ticket reversed? Fine by me. At least then they'd understand how f---ing frustrating it is to deal with the DC government.
I contested a parking ticket a few weeks ago for parking in what I later realized was a poorly marked handicap spot near the convention center on 9th. The ALJ, Alicia Roshell denied the appeal (fine $250) even though I had photos showing the obstructed sign, etc.. She was pretty rude and short with everyone else appealing, and I only saw her dismiss tickets for out of state zone violators. Does anyone know how to find out if particular areas are targeted more. I believe the convention street area is purposefully targeted and the m.maids because the meter maids know the signage is poor. I've been told they stop there several times an hour to nail people for the $250. Any thoughts?
Any place that is frequented by unsuspecting and/or tourist drivers is going to be targeted. That is true anywhere in the world. They get more return for their investment of time and money patrolling the streets. Look at stats for parking tickets issued near central park in NYC. Or Wrigley Field in Chicago. Or Fisherman's Wharf in SF. These areas get patrolled heavily for parking tickets. The Convention Center in DC is no different.
I agree with your basic premise, but in this situation, there was no convention going on, and in D.C., especially NW, there's many tourist areas that are a much bigger draw than the convention center area. This was early on a Saturday, with little going on in the neighborhood. In addition, based on conversations with locals, the m.maid appears just to be targeting the handicap spots, not even checking the meters along the street.
I was thinking a FOIA request to the city for certain stats, potential class action....
new signs for no parking between 9pm and 5am nightly were recently installed on a block between my apartment and a liquor store. on saturday night, while walking that block at 9:40pm to the liquor store 4 meter maids were hitting every car parking on the block. the attendants of the wedding reception who were being ticketed were pissed. i was just amazed that it took 4 meter maids to do one block - and wondered how they coordinated it.
I agree with your basic premise, but in this situation, there was no convention going on, and in D.C., especially NW, there's many tourist areas that are a much bigger draw than the convention center area. This was early on a Saturday, with little going on in the neighborhood. In addition, based on conversations with locals, the m.maid appears just to be targeting the handicap spots, not even checking the meters along the street.
Three times in the last year, I received a ticket after parking at an expired meter. The tickets were for parking at an expired meter and not for overstaying the time limit which applied regardless of whether or not the meter was working.
In all three cases, I had called in when I parked and reported the broken meter, receiving a case number -- an easy process, each call took about a minute.
After receiving the tickets, I contested each via the mail, noting the case number I had received. Each ticket was dismissed within a month or so.
So from my experience, contesting via the mail, when you have a valid case, works. And now I have a form letter which can easily be changed the next time I receive an invalid ticket.
The new parking-receipt systems installed in Penn Q (and elsewhere) recently are going to make it harder to beat the system. No broken-meter defense, no confusing signage plea.
On the plus side, they do force the meter personnages to get their butts out of their cars.